A behavioral economic analysis of concurrently available money and cigarettes.
Money and cigarettes stay on separate demand curves, so raising the work for one does not push smokers toward the other.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Adults with cigarette dependence sat at a panel with two buttons.
Pressing the left button earned money. Pressing the right button earned a cigarette.
Both buttons required the same number of presses, but that number kept rising across sessions.
The researchers watched how often each button was pressed as the work got harder.
What they found
When the required presses jumped from 100 to 400, money choices dropped fast.
Cigarette choices dropped too, but only a little.
Cross-price check showed almost zero linkage: making money expensive did not push smokers toward cigarettes, and vice-versa.
The two reinforcers acted like separate worlds, not competing goods.
How this fits with other research
Honig et al. (1988) saw a different picture. When they removed food, alcohol choices rose sharply—clear contrast. Their schedule was concurrent like ours, yet reinforcers talked to each other. The gap is timing: contrast shows up fast, while price elasticity needs many sessions.
Duker et al. (1996) also used concurrent schedules, but with kids doing math for tokens. They held the schedule steady and lowered token quality. Time on the rich side fell, proving weak reinforcers lose power even when the ratio stays easy. Our study flips that: we held quality steady and raised the ratio. Together the papers show both ratio size and reinforcer strength steer choice.
Leigland (2000) later showed that interval schedules still obey the matching law when data are pooled. Our near-zero cross-elasticity does not break matching; it simply says the two reinforcers had separate value scales, so price changes on one scale barely nudged the other.
Why it matters
If you run a concurrent preference assessment, do not assume changing one reinforcer will boost the other. Cigarettes and money stayed independent even when work tripled. Test each reinforcer across its own price range. When treatment involves two very different rewards—say, screen time versus snacks—treat their demand curves as separate data sheets. This keeps your reinforcement plan precise and avoids surprise drops in motivation.
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Join Free →During your next concurrent preference assessment, double the response requirement on one option and graph both items separately—do not expect the other item to pick up the slack.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
In economic terms, consumption of a reinforcer is determined by its price and the availability and price of other reinforcers. This study examined the effects of response-requirement (i.e., price) manipulations on the self-administration of two concurrently available reinforcers. Six cigarette smokers participated in 4-hr sessions in which money and puffs on a cigarette were concurrently available according to fixed-ratio schedules of reinforcement. Once stable responding was obtained with both reinforcers available at Fixed Ratio 100, the response requirement for one reinforcer was systematically varied (Fixed Ratio 1,000 and 2,500), while the other reinforcer remained scheduled at Fixed Ratio 100. Increasing the fixed-ratio size for a reinforcer decreased its consumption, with a greater decrease occurring for monetary reinforcement. This finding was quantified in economic terms as own-price elasticity, with elasticity coefficients greater for money than cigarettes. The effects of fixed-ratio size on response output also differed across the two reinforcers. Although greater responding occurred for money at Fixed Ratio 100, increases in fixed-ratio size (for money) decreased responding for money, whereas the same increase in fixed-ratio size (for puffs) increased responding for puffs. Finally, increasing the fixed-ratio size for one reinforcer had little effect on consumption of the other concurrently available reinforcer. This finding was quantified as cross-price elasticity, with elasticity coefficients near 0.0 for most subjects, indicating little or no reinforcer interaction. The results indicate that the reinforcing effects of cigarettes and money in the setting studied here differed, and that the effects produced by changing the price of one reinforcer did not interact with the consumption of the other concurrently available reinforcer.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1994 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1994.61-191